2/28/05

A review of Ashbery's Selected Prose, parts drafted first here, at Verse.

2/26/05


It couldn't be simpler.


Congealed pizza never tastes just right.

Recite the lines ... Let them die down

You know what? I hadn't thought much about it. Until you brought the subject up.


~~ *#****# *####*

It couldn't be more connected by "and" and "and."



I'm sorry I mentioned it. It was meant as a lacy red missle, but it just goes to show you.

The thrum of hummingbirds, indeed.



Embellished imagery's a subfunction of contemporary diaspora aesthetics. At least that's my guess, o wild diva of the underbrush.



I'm thinking of the radiant subtelty of a pig.



Gray braids of familiar noise.


Psychic veil.

John Lurie is the Keenau Reeeves of hip haberdashery.





Recite the lines
let them die down
and into the ruins


I thought about going undercover.



Geof Huth says, "Many visual poets do not yet fully understand what they're doing, do not yet understand what they can do and how their poems can mean." I've been adding a few strings.


My wake shines, now it is growing dark.


The days of the marquee are numbered.

2/25/05


2/24/05

I write for money. It's in my blood.
What's wrong with a billion for two
circulating on a branch, feathery
and hollow-boned under another?
Keynes says somewhere no one ever
writes the real story for free. You've
got to be sculpture to understand.

The real story is staring at money.
You can't count the coin fast enough --
seized by the global network of a lifetime
on tropical C-notes without whose woven
mass, chocolate and auburn, everything's
charm-free illuminating patterns entered
by a shower of gold coins.

And this was the hottest,
hot and cool, small video screens
of mist over water, a balloon floating
in a swimming pool, views down
hallways of stairs cut apart and fronted
with music waking in hazy-brightness
without memory of how you got there.

2/23/05

Buddy Trial

Don't think of it as conspiracy. The sun in the square
Winter afternoons. An antidepressant did it.
Angling over the apartments so the light bisects --
Why not make a documentary of it? The northern row
Of dark houses diagonal the grand house, the guy

Next door wants to know if you took the rubber duck
That was suddenly -- Carl, no! and a chill equipoise
In a bitter year; it would be helpful if the first words
Out of your mouth weren't "J'accuse." It's been weeks
Harshly formal by day, brusque in their authority.

And these lights here let you know when the camera
Is obsolete. At the beginning of evening they'd go a blue
-- I'm in the sandwich generation lit from top to bottom
Mommy and dad and their friends pretending
They don't have horrible lives now.
William Buckley Yeats

The listless player in the field is the health insurers.
How can those terrified fingers push
Her attitude on the law? "You know what? When the laws
Are unjust, I really don't care." But feel the strange heart
Beating where it is?

Those who believe in the market welcome maneuvers
A shudder in the loins engenders
A special odium at large, a sudden blow: the great wings
Beating still that bring to mind the temper of dissenters.
What are the rules in a free society?

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
The current figures hold, the rupture deepened,
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But a seesaw between the two happens frequently
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

Turning an intellectual hatred is the worst;
That he would be killed, followed quickly by the execution,
Had the special effect. Considering that, all hatred
Driven hence, the soul recovers innocence,
The most copious source of this.

Surely some revelation at hand
Surely it is piquant the man we tried to kill
Flaunts judicial extravagances while all about
A vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Cries of victors' justice spring forth.

Thirst for symbolic vindication will continue unslaked.
News, rants, activism and other things come round at last
The darkness drops again; but now I know
The work can vividly be described the head of a man;
The ceremony of innocence drowned;

A broad search suggests the scope of festering animosity;
A crazy salad with their meat. Vexed to nightmare
It may help to recall beheadings were conventional
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone, and everywhere
I will not write, ever, a formal autobiography.

2/22/05

Not bad: Burred vlision.
The blogs are sinking: please remain calm.
Clark Coolidge may be the most powerful poet on either coast. But not even he considers the majority of his work first-rate.

"I know a lot of what I've written is not 'A' work," he said recently over lunch. "But my role was different. I wanted to raise the level of everyday poetry as much as I could."

Such self-effacing charm is typical of Coolidge, and it has helped him land some of the most coveted publication deals in the U.S. Gracious and conservatively dressed, he moves comfortably in the upper levels of poetry society. And his willingness to compromise -- buttressed by well-honed political skills -- has long made him a favorite of publishers, who tend to see financial interests and creative vision as incompatible.

But Coolidge is no longer content to be the pet poet of the mainstream world: he now longs for the kind of critical recognition that has so far eluded him. Increasingly, in seeking it he has begun to position himself as a worthy rival to the more daring poets from whom he once sought to distance himself.

This desire could be seen as a function of age. At 63, Coolidge has left his mark on a wide range of important projects -- from Robes of Oba published by the powerhouse The Figures to the stylish French publication by Foundation Royaumont of Le texte des billets (cristals) -- but he has yet to create the kind of poetry that inspires awe or has lasting meaning.

His sudden conversion may also be viewed as a professional necessity. In recent years, he has had to watch as more conceptually challenging poets like Emmanuel Moses, John Peck and Marilyn Hacker have risen to the top of their profession without sacrificing their creative visions. It's not just art-crazed poet-tasters that are seeking them out; mainstream readers and, more important, ordinary publishers -- the kind of "clients" who have traditionally been Coolidge's bread and butter -- have come to realize that these poets can shore up the bottom line by increasing a project's value and easing it through often tricky aesthetic territory.

The paradox is that Coolidge's change of heart coincides with the most politically fraught project of his career, the rewriting -- some would say the reweaving -- of his earlier work Own Face within the frame of a much less sanguine piece of his titled Bomb. The new project is tentatively titled Freedom as Thought, which despite revisions is looking more and more second-rate. Its twisted syntactical form capped by a network of cabalistic images is clumsily conceived, and there is no reason to expect it to improve.

Instead of boosting Coolidge's reputation, the project underlines the difficulty he faces trying to polish it. Aside from tapping fresh, creative resources, he has to challenge his own mindset, which is more about pleasing clients than about executing worthy poetry for them.

Poetry is the art of balancing values: spiritual, aesthetic, public, private. It always involves compromise, and few poets would deny that the client's desires take precedence. But the best poets understand that they also have an obligation to the public, no matter which publisher is paying their bills. That often means investing time in educating clients rather than simply acceding to their desires.

In a way, Coolidge may be a prisoner of his past. He has always operated on the assumption that satisfying a client's needs trumps creativity. After years of loyal service, his clients expect him to bend when it serves their purposes.

"There are moments when I feel I can't be part of this, and I want to walk away," he said recently over a still steaming tarte aux pommes. "I envy Marilyn's ability to do that," he said of Ms. Hacker. "I know she's walked away when she knows the battle's lost. But I can't do that. I can't do that to my clients."

2/17/05

Museum quality: (well-) coordinated marbles.
Ever notice how close bling is to billing: shorts, briefs, nothing.
Blogging this morning adds a lens and a riddle: just kidding.
Um, let's see: living imitates video programming: lit as sport and entertainment: prose tourney previews where poetry / blog pop contests are heading? "The process is arbitrary," it says.

Factor in, please, strategists and their victims, the realities of war.
Snow shoe manufacturers fear talent drain.

2/16/05

To create a modern atmosphere: you may not glance at the groom in a businesslike fashion.

2/15/05

Defining terms: extraordinary rendition, hyperbolic parabola, Cushing-Malloy.

2/14/05


2/11/05

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: 7,500 counts of aesthetic abuse by authority figures.

2/10/05

German Lieder: autumn, melancholy, gambling, porn.
The Sentence

During the break we reached an agreement.
The sun feeling this, shears. An organizing
effort, the wall loves it in buildings,
loves the window and the square forest floor

It looks out of. Jasmine, a friend, her scent,
an idea can be a sentence. Urgency in ideas
repairs them at night. Where are we
poet -- what part of your readership reddens

As little redwoods crop up in thickets
how can rope and harness keep the climbing
trees a secret about the rare canopy, secretive
against the order, as my head says we

Can reorder from the arborist supply
as the meaning stresses the sentence,
brings in personal demons to work
noticing us making an unruly descent

Worked down through the eucalyptus, saying
we saw you dragging branches of philosophy
-- fetch and roll over were not enough --
this time it will be, that will be all?

2/9/05

Most good poets will acknowledge that despite the attention they receive as individuals, their poetry is a collaborative effort, the work of teams of anonymous assistants and un-cited sources. It was true for Robert Creeley when he was at Naropa, relying on the youthful Clayton Eschelman and acolytes Joan Houlihan and Petula Clark, and it is true today for David Larsen, whose recent work reflects a mature person's curiosity about the florid poetics of Robinson Jeffers and, going back further, and farther afield, Parisian Fabre d'Olivet.

Jeffers, whose pre-beat, pre-surrealist poetry from midcentry broke ranks with Paris fashion, is about as hot as a person can get today, a maverick in death. And d'Olivet, whose Paris debut in the spring of 1893 is still remembered for his pronouncements on poetic production, affecting the first surrealists, is ripe for a revival. D'Olivet, a prodigious philologist, contradicted the classical-academic etymology of the words "poetry" and "poet" as, respectively, "making" and "maker," thereby superseding the tame consciousness exuding from connotations of the dictionary and literary "definition" persisting to this day even among alleged "avants."

If you have read Jeffers or d'Olivet or if you have spent even a few days at Naropa, it is unlikely that you possess the patience or interest to repeat yourself. And anyway, if you did, it would make you the Elvis of poetry. Larsen is Elvis. As it is, his poems in the upcoming Hot Sphinxes bear little relation to one another except in their fascination with childlike proportions and old-school cool in metaphysical trimmings. Indeed, to see apple-cheeked prosody in a loose-fitting rhyme, flowery metaphors with black tights and patent-leather shoes, as it were, is to imagine the poetry-receptors in one's brain as constituting a giant dollhouse, with the bespectacled, persistently bemused Mr. Larsen peering over the open roof.

Though, to be fair, more could not be expected, as it does Larsen credit that he listens to his predecessors, Philip Lamantia, Mahmud Kianush, Sohrab Sepehri, among many others, along with the indomitable Jeffers and d'Olivet, and gives himself and his assistants, Alli Warren and Michael Snider, free rein to explore novel poetic shapes and hip new scansion schemes. You can never tell what might come of such explorations. Larsen also appreciates, in the same way that George Steinbrenner does, that play equals creativity. And if there is any message to be gathered from Larsen's tinkling poetry covered in joie d'esprit, that is it.

Apart from two titled pieces at the beginning and two more at the end, the collection of untitled poems in Hot Sphinxes shows a lot of imagination without that dreaded word "whimsy." A panting and screeching enjambement, with broad bands of black humour, feels just great, a style like creamy oatmeal that Larsen has put back into vogue. In one poem, a loose narrative about alligators in helmets, the deep asymmetry seems a bit off until your realize this is the least awkward feature here or in many of Larsen's short pieces, each, admittedly, sporting "squiggles" of extraneous stuff like assonance and imagery. All together, though, the romantic-naïve gestures here "work," making a fresh connection to modern life.

2/7/05

Shroud of Paramecium

Four guests gather at the Glass House of Ancestry. The characters Akira and Charlene have been tranquilized, the term 'double helix' eclipsed and quarantined like a pair of white ponies pulling a cart with a tiered wedding cake in front of the gravel-voiced bureaucrats Bouvard and Pecuchet who supervise the proscenium. Pecuchet takes the dj position. There is no deadness in "Merging Color and the Sentence," the tune released as a taut, upbeat mix piped over a basket of laundry.

The song ends. At last, scraps of nothing toot in silence. Somewhat of a departure though resembling what came down earlier, the quiet gets martyred to an object or, worse, an idea.

Akira: "Climax -- that's most serious complication but not focus of our body (or movement), Char?"

Charlene: "Hey, artist..."

The history of caring about chalk-numbered players distorts the real drama. A whole equation is misleading. Akira is in. A tiny sign in a flowerless flowerbed named Huge Blast.

Charlene: "I had trouble finding it."

Akira: "Rub it in."

Bouvard, to Pecuchet: "How far?"

Pecuchet: "A mile on the left. There's two big gateposts."

Bouvard, to the audience: "The quartet of us flies for about 15 minutes and sets down at a tiny airfield. My play is about money. And defining the trajectory of something warming up our fingers, arms and lungs. That something could be sun-soaked, and it's starting to fade. The truth is no one can verify the number. We settlers are becoming isolated."

Pecuchet: "I'm attempting to describe manners without specifying characters or their behavior. I can see Akira maturing right in front of me (or, you know, on the stage), breaking out of his hormonal shell, tapping his inner adolescent for real human sustenance, gaining his sea legs so to speak, finding his true voice as an idol under Charlene's tutelage. And where are Bouvard and me? Where, like, are the dustbins that pose reductive dichotomies? I'm sinking now. It's a kitschy porcelain nude feeling. But then would I fraternize with guys who worship at a hamster ampitheatre? (Yes.) For like the Shroud of Paramecium the characters known as Bouvard and Pecuchet exist not only between individuals but also within."

Akira: "My gracious, this is wonderful."

Pecuchet: "Bouvard and I used to swim at home! When exercise is a pleasure, I guess, fitness is easy."

Bouvard: "I'm thrown into an absolute -- take a wild guess. The words are two holes appearing for cake duty with such speed they reflect the world as it is, and images I don't care about. It looks like a very intense little place in… Oh, grow up! Who dealt this mess?"

From the rafters birds appear, the lights dim.

Pecuchet, to the audience: "Such dumb terns give literature a hand, the fishes around a hollow brook."

Bouvard, to Charlene: "I live not far from their butts trying to walk uphill."

Special forces arrive to cheers and applause.

Charlene, pointing to Akira: "He expects to get out of this."

Akira: "The island is better without you."

Charlene, to Bouvard but still pointing to Akira: "He holds me so close his nipples stand up. This is how he votes."

Akira: "I voted against you."

Charlene: "He's checking out women again. He had to have. For, against, he hasn't a clue."

Bouvard: "Not one word not purloined. Yay. For example."

Pecuchet, to the audience: "Are we hardwired for savage in-fighting? I am. I was born sporting a wormhole to kill for courage, holding a voodoo rattle. I call it my Britanicus and pang. It's so pure it allows the whole spectrum of color to enter and exit my sidekick without interruption."

The lights are turned up.

Bouvard: "Are we in Rome or Amsterdam? They are coming toward us..."

Bouvard points to Akira and Charlene, walking his way.

Pecuchet: "Two figures with arms entwined, and there is a sense they are floating just above the street, a mustache color or toxic gloom? The circus lineup, stubbed at random."

Special forces move to block Akira and Charlene, and close in on the two bureaucrats.

Bouvard: "The globe should be taken seriously."

Pecuchet: "Death by oeuvre."

Bouvard: "They say the sketch is in peril."

2/3/05

Sorry to turn back to this, but everything we the assembled can sense about our careless and ill-mannered pageant Americana, our flame-throwing mindsets, our imprecise rhetorics, our foods and drugs will be typed Bush II.2. Two point two, for short. Bad chill.

2/1/05

I don't care, it's time for more stuff you can't take apart. Or take it apart and get gunk on your umph, wedge.